Firms

If you live in Southern California, you've gotten - or will get - a parking or speeding ticket. It's an immutable law of nature. And in tandem with this natural phenomenon, a cottage industry of legal professionals has taken root to assist people in navigating and, possibly, beating the system. Take, for example, a company called the Ticket Clinic, which has offices throughout the region and boasts that it "may be your best bet for getting your traffic ticket dismissed. " Among other services, the Ticket Clinic says, it can "keep additional points off of your driving record" and "prevent skyrocketing insurance rates resulting from a traffic ticket.

BEIJING -- Private companies specializing in deep ocean search will be hired to continue the quest to find Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, Australia's prime minister said Monday, and the cost could run more than $55 million and take six to eight months. The U.S. Navy's robotic submarine Bluefin-21 has searched more than 150 square miles of the floor of the Indian Ocean in an area where investigators thought they had detected pings from the Boeing 777's black box transmitters in early April.

Companies founded by Todd DeStefano, the former events manager at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum Commission, received payments of at least $10,000 in the years shown from: 2008 Tool of North America: Filmed commercials at the Coliseum or Sports Arena University of California: Hosted a UCLA pregame event in 2007 at the city-owned swim stadium, which neighbors the Coliseum "An American Carol": A film that shot scenes at...

South Bay Assemblyman Al Muratsuchi on Friday announced a bill designed to take the financial heat off Hermosa Beach voters who are being asked to decide whether to allow oil drilling in their city for the first time in more than 80 years. The legislation would allow the city to take out a no-interest loan from the state to help pay off a $17.5-million penalty the city would face if voters in the beach town reject an oil drilling proposal. The assemblyman said he wanted Hermosa Beach residents to vote "without the gun of this financial penalty to their head.

A federal rule adopted Monday places tighter restrictions on how U.S. trading firms can invest their customers' money. The action comes amid a federal investigation into whether MF Global illegally tapped its clients' accounts before filing for bankruptcy. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission voted Monday to finalize the rule. It prohibits firms from using money from customer accounts for certain investments, including purchases of foreign debt. It also limits how much of their money can be invested in others, such as money-market mutual funds.

Port truck drivers from three Carson-based firms went on strike Monday, alleging unfair labor practices by their employers, union organizers said. Truck drivers from Green Fleet Systems allege their employer has in recent months retaliated against them for their efforts in seeking to unionize, organizers said. This is their second strike in less than three months. In late August, truck drivers went on a 24-hour strike that ended with a rally with clergy before returning to work.

An Orange County pharmacist has won a $20,000 judgment against two companies he said stiffed him on pay for work he did on a state contract while the firms were co-owned by the husband of state Sen. Mimi Walters (R-Irvine). The state labor commissioner found that pharmacist Larry Drechsler of Orange County had not been paid more than $4,000 that was owed him for services provided to the companies, American Healthcare Recruiting and Drug Consultants Inc. The rest of the award was for interest and penalties.

For U.S. military firms, the latest revelations of highly sophisticated hacker attacks on Google Inc. are highlighting a new reality, and a potentially lucrative business: The battlefield is shifting to cyberspace. Google's admission last week that it and other large companies were infiltrated by cyber-spies is bolstering prospects for major military contractors that in recent years have been intensifying their focus from developing weapons to defending computer systems and networks.

Despite recent moves by Yahoo Inc. and Best Buy to end work-from-home arrangements, telecommuters need not fret. Most firms have no plans to end the flexible work policies, a survey found. A poll of 120 human resources executives by Challengers, Gray & Christmas Inc., a global outplacement and executive coaching firm, found that 97% of those who responded -- about 80% -- said they had no plans to eliminate telecommuting. "When major companies like Yahoo and Best Buy make notable policy changes, there is no doubt that other employers will take notice and some may even reevaluate their policies," said John A. Challenger, chief executive of the firm.

The obscure intermediaries that were paid millions of dollars to win investment business from the California Public Employees' Retirement System ranged from Wall Street heavyweights to small independent firms. But all shared a common pursuit: grabbing a piece of lucrative consulting work in what has become a pension-fund bonanza. Documents released by CalPERS on Thursday show that a variety of firms with differing backgrounds and expertise were paid tens of millions over the last decade for acting as intermediaries between investment managers and the pension-fund giant.

An oil operation that sent noxious fumes into a South Los Angeles neighborhood has agreed to spend about $700,000 on upgrades to prevent future hazardous emissions, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced Thursday. The settlement capped a four-month investigation by the EPA into Allenco Energy Inc. that was prompted by hundreds of complaints of chemical odors, respiratory ailments, nosebleeds and other health problems in the University Park community, about a half-mile north of USC. "The company must notify the EPA that they have completed the improvements at least 15 days before reopening," said Jared Blumenfeld, the EPA's regional administrator for the Pacific Southwest.

The 1,000 most popular websites in the world are now safe from the Heartbleed vulnerability, but 2% of the top 1 million websites remain unsecure, a security firm recently said. Cyber security firm Sucuri Inc. said it scanned the top websites as ranked by Alexa Internet, a company that collects Web traffic data, to test how many of them remain vulnerable to Heartbleed, a bug that was recently discovered. Heartbleed is a hole in OpenSSL, a security software used by most websites, that gives hackers an entryway to steal sensitive user data, including passwords.

Activist investor Bill Ackman is partnering with a Canadian pharmaceutical company in an effort to buy Allergan Inc., the Irvine company that makes the popular wrinkle treatment Botox. Ackman and Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc. have already acquired nearly 10% of Allergan's shares and will soon offer to purchase the company, Ackman and Valeant said Monday in a regulatory filing. News of the likely bid increased the stock price of both companies. In after-hours trading, investors drove up Allergan as much as 21% and Valeant by 10%. No formal offer was made Monday, but there was speculation about how much Allergan could fetch.

Call it the Great Easter Egg Smackdown of 2014. Every time I write about hard-boiled eggs, I seem to get a flood of mail telling me, essentially, "You're an idiot, and you're doing it all wrong. " So this year I threw down the gauntlet. On our Daily Dish blog and on social media, I posted a challenge to all those hard-boiled naysayers: You tell me how you do it, and we'll give it a try. Not to get all smug, but my method won out again. Though I did pick up a couple of refinements along the way. (None of which is to say, however, that I am not an idiot; just that I can boil an egg.)

Transportation officials have shelved plans for a second entrance to a downtown subway station across from L.A. police headquarters and the Los Angeles Times because the newspaper's parent company says it may develop the site, according to Metro documents published Tuesday. The Tribune Co. property, a parking lot in downtown L.A.'s Historic Core, is the site of a future station along a $1.4-billion subway aimed at closing one of the most frustrating gaps in Los Angeles County's growing rail network.

The average American would have to fork over an extra $1,259 in state and federal income taxes this year to make up for the revenue lost because of offshore tax havens used by corporations and wealthy individuals, according to a new report. U.S. companies will use offshore tax havens to avoid paying an estimated $110 billion in taxes this year, according to the analysis by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group. Wealthy people will circumvent about $74 billion in taxes. The report underscores the controversial issue of major companies using elaborate maneuvers to sidestep taxes, often by stowing income in overseas subsidiaries set up primarily for tax purposes.

MEXICO CITY - A Mexican regulatory agency has ordered the massive companies that dominate this nation's telephone and broadcast television sectors to share their network infrastructure with competitors, a move that could seriously alter Mexico's telecommunications landscape in the months and years to come. The rulings by the Federal Telecommunications Institute appeared to be a "step in the right direction" for the Mexican economy, said George W. Grayson, a Mexico specialist at the College of William and Mary.

SACRAMENTO - State Sen. Mimi Walters, an Orange County Republican, landed at the center of an ethics investigation after she helped a firm owned by her husband collect cash from the state prison system. Now at least a dozen subcontractors - dentists and pharmacists hired by two of David Walters' companies to treat inmates - say the firms owe them more than $120,000 in back payments. The workers have filed complaints in court and with the state labor commissioner.

George Steffes was a boy standing on Wilshire Boulevard when Dwight D. Eisenhower rolled by in a motorcade, and he was mightily impressed. But that's not what got him into politics. He went to 5 o'clock Mass one day in 1966 and ran into an acquaintance who was working on Ronald Reagan's gubernatorial campaign. Steffes volunteered. He went to Sacramento as Reagan's legislative aide and has been there ever since. He helped to found the first multi-person lobbying firm in Sacramento, Capitol Partners, where he's now “senior advisor,” no longer running the firm day to day. Almost 50 years in Sacramento have given him a long view of its roller-coaster politicking, including low points like the recent indictment of state Sen. Leland Yee. The ride has left him a bit queasy.

WASHINGTON - E-cigarette companies are preying on young consumers by using candy flavors, social media ads and free samples at rock concerts, according to a report released Monday by Democratic legislators. A survey of nine electronic-cigarette companies found most were taking advantage of the lack of federal regulations to launch aggressive marketing campaigns targeting minors with tactics that would be illegal if used for traditional cigarettes, according to a report released by Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.)